As part of its involvement in advising Ping An Insurance’s subsidiary Ping An Property, McKinsey & Company has invested an undisclosed amount into the company, which will be partly used for the company’s IPO. The date for the IPO has not been set.

The Ping An Insurance (Group) Company of China was founded in 1988 in Shekou, Shenzhen. The group was China’s first insurance company with a share based structure. The company has since grown to be the second largest insurance player in China. It operates a number of subsidiaries, including Ping An Life, Ping An Property & Casualty, Ping An Annuity, Ping An Health, Ping An Bank, Ping An Securities, Ping An Trust and Ping An-UOB Fund. Across all of its fronts, the company has around 798,000 life insurance sales agents and 246,000 full-time employees, with total assets at around $720 billion.

McKinsey & Company has worked with the Ping An Insurance Group for decades, helping the company expand its grasp on the Chinese insurance market, as it grew its business with subsidiaries to provide the market with life, health and securities insurance. The long term relationship between the two organisations has recently seen Ping An hire former McKinsey consultants for senior management roles. Former President Louis Cheung and Gregory Gibb have been attracted to operate the insurer’s online wealth management and peer-lending unit Lu.com, while McKinsey partner Violet Chung now works as the general manager of the property e-commerce unit.

It is this latter unit, Ping An Property (Shanghai) E-commerce, that will see McKinsey’s first venture investment outside the US in its 80 year history. The investment is part of the move to bring the unit to an initial public offering (IPO), for which the sum has not yet been disclosed. The unit was set up last year in May and has signed brokering agreements with a host of China’s biggest developers and new-home sales on its pinganfang.com platform – agreements which are said, by Chairman Nok Chong, to have surpassed $47 billion.